JVWR Announcement: Volume 4, Number 2: Goverment & Military

• Allen & Demchak (“Applied Virtual Environments: Applications of Virtual Environments to Government, Military and Business Organization”) review the compact ways the components of virtual worlds, and how they create future value in various areas. This is a survey that will allow researchers and practitioners to review, use and design their experiments.  
• Merge, Gardner, Broviak, and Greeves (“MuniGov 2.0, A New Residency Requirement: Local Government Professionals in Second Life”) describe MuniGov2.0 – a group of municipal government professionals who regularly meet in Second Life. The goal of the group is  to support each others geographically distributed implementation attempts to incorporate new technologies in the public sector.
• Ticknor & Tillinghast (“Virtual Reality and the Criminal Justice System: New Possibilities for Research, Training, and Rehabilitation”) present an extensive review of the relationship between Virtual Reality and the Criminal Justice System focusing on new possibilities for research, training, and rehabilitation.
• Cummins (“Avatars and Security Clearances: How can we reconcile the two?”) asks a simple question: how will vetting agencies reconcile the border-less nature of virtual worlds with the requirements set forth for establishing and maintaining security clearances?  This paper proposes to outline some of the relevant issues involved in a rapidly evolving online community.
• Maxwell, Aguiar, Monte, and Nolan (“Two Navy Virtual World Collaboration Applications: Rapid Prototyping and Concept of Operations Experimentation”) expose how being able to optimally configure and reconfigure spaces is a critical step in the design process to ensure the end meets the necessary mission requirements. The paper show the value of rapid active prototyping specifically for command and control scenarios.
• Hinrichs (“Avatars as the First Manifestation of Geo-Politically Unconstrained Global Citizens”) concludes with a provoking idea: a global citizen. How can virtual worlds play a role in the construction of a global citizen?

Let me also use this email to remind you that of the on-going call for Guest Editors, Associated Editors, and Reviewers. If you are interested in suggesting themes for the 2011-2013 publishing cycles, or joining our editorial team please send an initial proposal to Dr. Yesha Sivan (yesha.sivan AT jvwresearch.org).